The madness of ebay

[clayfaceiii]

Ok, I'm in the UK, and needless to say sales have fallen off the cliff.

How nuts is this, I'm selling a comic for £1.50 plus postage, sold a few. Then sales stop as it's now £2.28 plus postage as eBay has added 78p to the starting price for buyer protection.

Needless to say, no sales.  eBay have made my items more expensive.

The madness,..., I get an email from eBay telling me to drop my prices to get a sale, a price increase caused by them that's now hindering my sales. Mad, u could not make it up.

[*vyolla*]

It is the case now that private sellers listing low value items will have a pricing problem, I think that the only workaround here would be to put items into job lots.

It's a shame that eBay didn't make it so that the buyer protection fee only applied to items above say, £5.

This would protect the sales of low value collectables such as comics, stamps, CDs, postcards etc. 

[dch2112011]

Did you reduce your prices when the sellers fees were removed by ebay ?  If not this is probably the reason you are uncompetetive,  those that did not reduce their prices effectively increased their prices themselves by 35p plus 10%  - so the buyer is now being charged 35p plus 10% plus 75p plus 4%

'Mad, u could not make it up'

[action_man]

You're absolutely right. The madness of eBay extends to the madness of the eBay forum too, where twisted logic rules the day. As long as you stay true to yourself and allow them to twist themselves and not engage, it's all good. Then it all becomes a source of amusement.

I've no idea what happened, but somewhere along the way this once wonderful platform derailed. I'd like to see it one day return to former glories, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I got out of it in January because I could see how things were becoming increasingly manipulative. So, I have the advantage of watching without being involved.

If I get any "Yet here you are" or "You should leave" responses, I just tune them out. The strange thing is that those sort of posts are rather hostile, yet the moderator never seems to pick up on those. I wonder if that is because they come from eBay's own staff? I've no idea, but I can't see the average person off the street making 50,000 posts.

[ruby*ryan]

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@dch2112011 wrote:

Did you reduce your prices when the sellers fees were removed by ebay ?  If not this is probably the reason you are uncompetetive,  those that did not reduce their prices effectively increased their prices themselves by 35p plus 10%  - so the buyer is now being charged 35p plus 10% plus 75p plus 4%

'Mad, u could not make it up'

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I price each listing at time of listing, taking any fees into account. So, when I used to list during the 70% off FVFs times, I would allow for those fees. selling my low value items for around £3.25, out of which I actually got around £2.80.

When fees became free, and because I want rid of the items, I dropped my prices to £2.25, and obviously got the whole £2.25.

Now I sell at around £2.39, out of which I only get £1.61.

On top of that, buying multiple of those low value items from me no longer looks attractive, with the 75p fixed fee per item and the problem with sending invoices for combined postage.

So, there are still problems for those of us that DID reduce their prices when listings were free. So it is 'pretty mad' - as am I!

[dch2112011]

So what you are saying is you sold at :

£3.25 including seller fees

£2.25 excluding any fees for 8 weeks 

£2.39 including buyer fees 

This is madness - 

£3.25 is the price you should aim for with buyer fees to get back to what your buyers were paying before fee free two month holiday. 

So you are discounting your price by an extra 86p - entirely your decision not ebay's and you are blaming ebay for that decision - no wonder you are mad !

Your price if you left it at £2.25 net plus 75p plus 4%  would give the buyer a total price of £3.12 saving your buyer 13p on your price when seller fees were added prior to the fee free holiday of 8 weeks !

This makes you more competitive not less !

[ruby*ryan]

You missed a couple of points there. Main one being that many people DID reduce prices when free listings came in and aren't, as you suggest charging 2 lots of fees.

Also, I didn't say I blamed eBay for the price reductions, what I said was:

"When fees became free, and because I want rid of the items, I dropped my prices to £2.25, and obviously got the whole £2.25.
Now I sell at around £2.39, out of which I only get £1.61."

I blamed eBay for the ridiculous 75p per item charge and messing up the combined postage invoices, which has made selling multiples very difficult (and makes it harder for me to get rid of these items).