Thanks again for your hard work and clear explanations.

Tim

The letter above is what I wrote as a reaction to the new eBay seller fees. Please excuse the typos. That letter only tells part of the story regarding a small, steady, 5 star seller rating, 100% feedback, eBay seller (myself). What I didn’t know until reading this article was that eBay is increasing there final value fees as well. All I can say is “wow”. I feel sorry for the sellers who depend on their eBay sales as a major part of their income.

Regards,

Darren B.

Attention eBay policy makers,

I am an eBay seller who has been doing business on eBay since April 2005. Every once and awhile eBay makes changes to their policies to improve the buying and selling experience. The last major change that occurred about a year and a half ago was not very much welcomed by many sellers including myself. The were many blogs and websites like YouTube where sellers were voicing their displeasure and even threatening not to do business on eBay because the changes, according to the disgruntled sellers, were not in their best interest. Despite the changes that took place then, although I didn’t like them myself, I had no choice but to comply if I wanted to continue doing business on eBay.

Not too long ago I got an email from eBay announcing fee changes that “were the best ever offered”. I did take a quick look at it, but didn’t really feel that it would effect me. I been steadily listing my items every week on eBay, and because I increased the number of items listed, I started using Turbo Lister to make it easier.

On March 30th when I listed my items using Turbo Lister, I did so automatically without checking how much I would be charged. I was shocked to later find out that I was charged 50 cents for each Fixed Price listing instead of my usual cost of 15 cents each. I immediately contacted eBay’s online billing customer support after hours to inquire why I was charged so much. The rep told me that there were fee changes that just took place. My immediate reaction was for him to reimburse my money and discontinue my listings. I told him that I didn’t get a prior warning from eBay about these drastic price increases. The rep was kind enough to reimburse my listing fees and sent me a link explaining the fee changes.

After going to the webpage link that the rep sent to me and examining in detail the fee changes and how they would effect me, I soon realized that the changes wouldn’t be beneficial to me at all. It is a loose loose scenario for me. For example, I was paying 15 cents each for my DVD Fixed Price listings. Due to the new fee changes, If I choose not to subscribe to the eBay Seller Store, I will now have to pay 50 cents each for each listing. If I do give in and subscribe to an eBay’s Basic Store, I would have to pay a monthly fee for the store and a higher price to list each of my items. That is, I would pay 16 dollars a month for the store and 20 cents for each listing.

I called eBay’s customer service due to my frustration regarding these changes and how they are negatively effecting me. I wanted to speak to a live person. Although I knew the rep I was talking to couldn’t really do anything to help me, I still wanted someone from eBay to hear my frustration and dissatisfaction regarding these changes. I explained to the rep that there is nothing in these new fee changes that would help me with the current way that I prefer selling on eBay. I told him there is no way that I am going to subscribe to a store. If I were to get a Basic Store I would have to pay a monthly fee and more list my item. I also let him know that there would be no way that I would subscribe to the next store option and pay 50 dollars a month plus 5 cent to list each of my items. Finally I told him that due to these changes, I will most likely stop selling on eBay altogether or sell very few items. It’s funny because I was just getting ready to increase my listings from 32 to about 50.

So, as I stated earlier, the so called new fee changes are a loose loose situation. Not only will I loose, but eBay looses as well because they will no longer get monthly payments from me if I stop selling or decrease my listings. It makes me think who the geniuses are who come up with these changes? Do they REALLY think that these changes are good for the sellers? From my point of view, I don’t think so.

Is there anyone on eBay’s board of directors who monitors what the sellers are saying on the internet about theses new fee changes or do you even care? I submitted a query to Google regarding how sellers felt about the new changes and the first site that came up was a survey on auctionbytes.com about what eBay sellers felt about the changes on. Please refer to the following link: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y210/m02/abu0256/s02 – There you will find some shocking statistics. Here is just the first paragraph. “Three-quarters of eBay sellers surveyed by AuctionBytes said that new fees coming at the end of March would result in increased monthly fees. Close to half (45%) of sellers said eBay’s decision to do away with Stores Inventory Format would have a negative impact on their business, and over one-third (34%) said their sell-through rate would decline as a result of the elimination of the Stores Inventory format. Only 7% said the opportunity to list up to 100 auctions a month for free for items with a starting price of under $1 would have a positive impact on their business”.

After reading those survey results on that website, I realized that I wasn’t the only unhappy eBay seller. I’m sure that there are numerous sellers who are voicing their displeasure with these new changes all over the internet. The only question is, what are you eBay policy makers going to do about it?

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Darren Briscoe
peerlesspublishing (eBay user ID)