Hidden eBay Fee Increases You Need To Know About...

At the first of the year, as many of you know - it was very well covered in the Media - eBay intitiated a massive fee increase campaign, much to the frustration of many eBay Sellers across the globe. Some of these changes constituted a 50% increase in fees.

 eBay was pretty good about notifying members of these changes, but there was one "increase" in particular that didn't find its way into all the literature and formal notices eBay gave to its members. There have been several write-ups about this in print media, but until recently, I wasn't even aware of this change, and I am an avid seller on eBay.

I thought it was a bit fishy that at the same time eBay made this 'quiet' fee change, they also created software that made it much easier for the sellers to change the starting bid amount of a great number of auctions, at one time. In other words to change, in mass, the starting bid of up to several hundred active auctions at one time...Interesting.

Why?

What was the one change to the fee system that eBay forgot to mention to its members? You guessed it,

Listing Fee Refunds for decreasing your Starting Bid.

You see, before the first of this year 2006, if you started a bid for a 'widget' at $55.00, and after a few days, a competitor listed their exact same 'widget' for $45.00, you could DECREASE your starting bid to better compete with the other auction, AND EBAY WOULD REFUND THE DIFFERENCE in listing fees.

Well, as of the first of the year, they no longer do that. And they neglected to mention that change anywhere in their formal notification to the consumer.

eBay marketplace is a very dynamic, fluid, competative environment. As such, it is often the case that sellers will adjust their starting bid DOWN to compete with a new listing. If a seller increases the starting bid, eBay has, and still does, assess a fee for the change.

Fair enough. BUT they no longer apply the same logic, if you decide to decrease your starting price. So, it appears, as long as it is profitable for eBay, it's the right thing to do; if it has to do with putting money back in YOUR pocket, well...sorry Charlie.

I believe this information is important for several reasons, the least of which is that this is a perfect example of a 800-pound gorilla corporation using slight of hand to nickel and dime the consumer to the tune of millions of dollars. I know several Power Sellers that lose about $10-15 a week because of this. Take that number multiply it times 52, and then again by several hundreds of thousands, and you have the profit margin that eBay enjoys because of this 'minor' detail they neglected to tell us about. Not to mention they created software at the same time that allows you to make these changes much easier, and in-mass.

In summary I would like to say that I think eBay is a great concept, and forum for purchasing very hard to find collectable items, and general consumer items, at a significant discount. I do not however think that this fact should allow eBay to think that this type of 'shell game' is exceptable...

It's not. To my mind anyway.

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Thanks for reading.

Safe Bidding Everyone.

msrs_online