eBay's New Changes Hurt Small Sellers: Feb. 20, 2008

I have bought and sold on eBay, off and on, for about five years or so now. It's really a great way of making money from home. Whether you're a power seller or just trying to get rid of some items and make a little extra money, eBay is (or was) a great way to go.

I received an e-mail about their current fee changes going into effect on Feb. 20, 2008. At first I was pretty happy to see that the listing fees are going to be lower and was thrilled to see that the gallery picture will be free.

Changes to the feedback process are both good and bad, right now you can give or get feedback on each and every item you buy or sell, but although each of the feedback does show up, it is actually only counted once.

The new changes will allow feedback per member to counted once per week, but you'll no longer be able to leave bad feedback for a buyer or even neutral feedback to someone who just decides not to pay for a item or make false claims about the item!

To add insult to injury, as the old saying goes, once a year, all the positive feedback that you've worked so hard to get will just vanish! The new system will roll back your feedback rating to 0 every twelve months!

After checking out the fee overview page on the eBay.com web site, I was very disappointed. It's going to cost a whole nickel less to list the pair of jeans in my closet I no longer wear, but if someone does buy them, it's going to cost me 3.5 percent more on the final value fees. I'd rather just pay the extra nickel to list the item in the first place!

For us small sellers that usually end up with ending bids of less than $25 we'll be saving a whole nickel on the listing fees. While the bigger sellers will be saving as much as eighty cents on their listing fees!

Ebay doesn't seem to discriminate when it comes to their final cut though, the raises in final value fees will affect everyone. The final value fees start with a base amount and then add another percentage if the item sells over a certain price.

Let's say you list an item on eBay right now for $9.99 and it sells for $20, you would pay $1.45 for the listing fee and final value fee. Once the new fee changes go into effect next month, that same sale will cost you $2.10! Now if your item happened to sell for $25.01 or more you'd have to add an additional 3.25% to the total, the new fees will add an additional 3.50% to that total.

With the new fees, if you list an item with a starting bid of between $10 and $25 you will save a nickel on the listing fee, but the final value fee will be 67 percent higher if your item sells. And, that's only if it sells for $25 or less!

According to the report on Topix.com the new changes being made at eBay are an attempt to pull out of a slump. The number of people using the auction site only grew by 2% over the last year. But, many are not sure this is the way to go about increasing business.

Cutting a little here just so you can charge more there somehow doesn't seem to be good business sense to me. Sure eBay will be making more from the sellers, but I'd imagine they'll be losing more when many sellers no longer use their auction.

Between the eBay's fees, the fees that Paypal charges and the rising costs of shipping and handling, it's already gotten almost impossible for the small seller to make much of a profit on eBay.

I know that I, for one, will not be selling any items there any more and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that will be looking at some of the other online auction sites.

Sources:
eBay.com
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/basic/index.html#insertion
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801.shtml#2008-01-29054823

Topix.com
http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/TJJDQLT2DN8H7L93P