[Me-Tom-orphasis] - Welcome

Well, tonight was it for me.. a longstanding part of my e-commerce career might have just fallen into jeopardy thanks to eBay’s new policies.

As of next month, ebay is jacking their fees to sellers (me) from 5% per transaction to 8.75% per transaction. This means that if I sell on my normal threshold of MAXIMUM 20% markup on an item, my profit just fell through the floor.

I sell widget 1 for 20 dollars and I paid 16.00 for it. (that’s on a good day) and the customer pays on a credit card.

My cost: 16.00

Selling Price: $20.00

Gross Profit: $4.00

Insertion Fee = .15 cents

Final Value Fee = 8.75% (20.00 x .0875) $1.75

Paypal Fee = .30 + 4.9%  = $1.28

Total Fees: $3.18

Net Profit: .82 cents.

You see now why some sellers HAVE to screw buyers to make any profit on eBay? It’s horrible, but they do it. Now, it’s only going to get worse. And to top it all off, eBay has a wonderful new idea titled:

· Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.

I saw this and completely flipped out. You mean the guy who screwed me for 192.00 last month on a sale that I had to pay the fees for can’t be reprimanded for ending my auction, wasting my time, AND making me have to eat the fees and Relist the item (paying the fees again). Wow. If sellers screw a buyer, buyers leave negative feedback, which KILLS a seller. If BUYERS screw a seller, “ehh.. that’s ok… we need the buyers to make eBay more money.”

Thank you so much eBay.. you officially suck!

Want to see what other sellers have to say? It’s only been released for a couple of hours and already sellers are screaming their heads off.

• No Negative feedback for buyers is a bad thing for BUYERS as well
• Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback

I found a link thrown in boards about petitioning Google to open up their own auction site (God I would love that). When the petition was posted (10 minutes ago) there were about 3000 signatures from awhile back. In the 5 minutes it took me to sign it, there were another 2,000. I was petitioner $4627. I wonder how long it will take this to hit national news.. any comments, feedback?

What did eBay have to say for themselves? Well, here is their response to WHY they are doing this. (Official copy located here)

“We believe that we will reduce any imbalance in the Feedback system with these changes. Buyers will be able to more accurately assess sellers and sellers will be protected from buyers who violate our policies without risking a cut in good buyer activity.
We believe that: (WTF is wrong with that statement?)

1. buyers will be more honest when they leave Feedback since they will not fear retaliatory negative Feedback. (BULL!)
2. buyers will bid more and higher since their trust in the Feedback system and the sellers will increase. (True.. cause they’re screwing sellers)
3. our best performing sellers will be able to differentiate themselves from all other sellers and increase the amount of business they receive as buyers gravitate towards them.  (Whoo.. I can differentiate myself.. to myself.. cause.. why again?)
4. sellers will leave Feedback upon payment more often in order to increase their chance of receiving positive Feedback. (we good sellers ALREADY do that you scumbags!)

Is eBay favoring buyers over sellers with this change?
The change in the Feedback system is designed to improve the eBay marketplace which should benefit both buyers and sellers. Improving the Feedback system should increase the number of buyers whose expectations are met. This should result in more buying activity which will benefit sellers.” (How long did they have to study that one on the blackboard to make sure it SOUNDED like it made sense?)

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