Question
Whilst I do have my Ebay ID that is registered on the Australian site set to receive informational emails, I did not get the fee changes that were announced yesterday. I thought I would look around the other boards and see what other fee increases were proposed.
Ebay Australia
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing-au.shtml
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Selected fees on eBay.com.au are changing
Date: 06/01/04 Time: 03:13:47 PM EST
Selected fees associated with selling on eBay.com.au will be changing. We will introduce a fee for Listing Designer, change the Featured Plus! fee and change the Final Value Fees structure - all other fees will remain the same.
These fee changes will be effective from 00:00:01am AEDST on Tuesday 20 January 2004.
Details of the changes are as follows:
Listing Designer
We will begin charging AU$0.10 per listing using this feature (currently free).
Featured Plus!
Listings using the Featured Plus! feature will now be charged at AU$19.95 (currently AU$12.95).
Final Value Fees
A change will be made to the final value fee structure to extend the 5.25% tranche to AU$0.01 – AU$75.00 (currently AU$0.01 – AU$50.00). This will result in the 2.75% tranche starting from AU$75.01 (currently starting from AU$50.01).
Final value fees for Cars and Other Vehicles and Real Estate listings remains unchanged.
All listings that are created before the fee changes and scheduled to start after the changes, using the listing scheduling function, will be charged at the new rates.
Learn more about all current eBay fees.
Regards,
The eBay Team <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It is amusing to note that fees are either "changed" or "introduced", there seems to be an effort not to say that fees are increasing or rising.
The current Ebay Australia fees are found here.
Note that by their very nature the traffic on the "regional" sites will be much lower than on ebay.com , thus there is justification for fees some fees being lower as the exposure is not as high.
Answer
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
(1) Final Value Fees
A change will be made to the final value fee structure to extend the 5.25% tranche to AU$0.01 – AU$75.00 (currently AU$0.01 – AU$50.00). This will result in the 2.75% tranche starting from AU$75.01 (currently starting from AU$50.01). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The implication of this price change may have significance. As discussed here recently there is an "expectation" that FVF's will have a nominal (say quarter percentile) increase from time to time. However in this instance Ebay has chosen to use bracket creep. This increase makes the change less obvious but more substantial. Over a $25.00 bracket, the Final Value Fee has increased by 2.5%.
On a $75.00 sale, the additional fees will be 62.5 cents. If the quarter percentile had been added onto all FVF's, a $75.00 sale would have only produced 18.75 cents in additional fees. All sales over $75.00 will also produce this extra 62.5 cents - a quarter percentile increase would need sales of $250 to match this fee increase. This is a stealthy fee - by appearance the percentage fees are not higher, and I am guessing that many sellers will not notice this change. I appreciate that this is not a substantial fee increase, and it *should* have virtually no impact on the profitability of a $75.00 or higher sale. I am raising this simply as an observation of differences in methods of increasing fees on the Ebay site, and because there is a fair likelihood that this method will be used on the US/Home Ebay site in the future.
Another note, at current conversion rates the 5.25% FVF will now be on sales up to US $57.50 on the Australian site, whereas the 5.25% FVF only applies up to US $25.00 on the US/Home site.
Bracket creep indeed!
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(2) Listing Designer
We will begin charging AU$0.10 per listing using this feature (currently free).
This fee brings this service into line with the US/Home site.
(3) Featured Plus!
Listings using the Featured Plus! feature will now be charged at AU$19.95 (currently AU$12.95).
At $7.00 this increase is a 54% increase on the current fee, at the same time that home page featured sharply fell on the US/Home site. At current conversion rates the cost of Featured Plus! on the Australian site shall be US $15.30 compared to US $19.95 on the much heavier populated US/Home site. For the difference in traffic likely to see the featured auction, US/Home site offers much better value for money.
Just Bloviating, Kevin
(Have you ever noticed that analysis starts out as anal http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif )
Answer
Ebay United Kingdom.
The Ebay UK Site is amusing. If you click on the announcements link at the bottom of the page, you are taken to a page that has a list of all the recent announcements. At the time of writing there is no mention of price changes on that page. However, if you find the actual Announcement Board there is an announcement called "eBay.co.uk Fee Changes" that was posted on the 5th of January.
So members who simply follow the link to check the announcements are not actually made aware of the fee increases, umm, I mean enhancements http://community.here.com/infopop/em.../icon_wink.gif .
Ebay UK lost their Thesaurus and let slip with the word "increased" once, generally the prices either "changed" or were "restructured" - unless they fell then they were happy to use the word reduced (3 times for the one reduction). Yes, I am being petty, but I am amused by how evasive Ebay has been about mentioning that they have increased any fees to consumers.
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The Ebay UK price changes:
(1)Reserve Price Fees
Reserve Price fees across the site (excluding Cars, Commercial Vehicles, Motorcycles & Caravans) will be restructured.
Current Fees:
Reserve Price - £0.01 - £14.99 - Fee: £0.40
Reserve Price - £15.00 and £99.99 - Fee: £0.75
Reserve Price - £100.00 and up - Fee: 1%
From January 20th 2004:
Reserve Price - £0.01 - £49.99 - Fee: £1
Reserve Price - £50.00 - £4999.99 - Fee: 2% of Reserve Price
Reserve Price - £5,000.00 and up - Fee: £100
It does not appear that the previous reserve fees were capped, this structure does cap the fee aligning that aspect with other sections of Ebay. These new fees are substantially higher than the US/home site (mostly double because the US/home site has a 1% sliding fee), and since there is less traffic on the UK site there is probably more justification for the need to use reserves to protect a seller's interests. The capped fee of £100, converts to US $182.00 against the US/Home site's capped fee of US $100.00. (The Australian site has a 3% reserve fee, capped at AU $ 200.00 - currently converting to US $153.00).
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(2)Real Estate Reserve Price Fees
The current Reserve Price Fees structure for Real Estate will be replaced by a flat fee of £2
The current fee is:
For Motors and Real Estate with Reserve £100.00 and above - Fee: £2.00
I can only assume that people were abusing the system by putting reserves of less than £100.00 on their Real Estate to avoid the £2.00 fee. .....
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(3)Motors Pricing
The Final Value Fees in the Motors categories (Cars, Commercial Vehicles, Motorcycles & Caravans) will be changed from a flat fixed fee to a scale based on the Final Value of the item sold.
Current: "The following Final Value Fee structure applies to Vehicles (Cars, Commercial Vehicles, Motorcycles & Caravans):"
Auction Style - £18.00 fixed.
Buy It Now Only - £18.00 fixed.
The New Fee:
Final Value - £0.01 - £2,999.99 - Motors FVF: £15
Final Value - £3,000 - £5,999.99 - Motors FVF: 0.5% of the Final Value
Final Value - £6000.00 + - Motors FVF: £30
The Reserve Price Fee for items in the Motors categories will be increased from £2 to £3.
Vehicles that sell for under £3,600 do get a saving of up to £3 on current rates, but if a reserve is used £1 of that is lost.
Ebay Motors USA currently "does not charge a Final Value Fee at the close of Vehicle listings on eBay. Instead, eBay charges a Transaction Services Fee at the time of the first bid on your listing (or if you set a reserve price, at the time of the first bid over that reserve)." For comparison, their US $40 flat fee for cars is the equivalent of £22.00.
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(4)Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro
"The monthly subscription fees for Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro will be reduced. Selling Manager will be free from January 20th 2004. The monthly subscription for Selling Manager Pro, which is currently £6.99, will be reduced to £4.99."
US conversions are US $12.70 reduced to US $9.10......
This announced on the same week that Seller Assistant Pro on the US/Home site had a price hike from US $15.99 to US $24.99.
Either Selling Manager Pro is not a patch on SA Pro, or they are having serious problems at interesting the British in this tool. It appears to be a big disparity in pricing, but does depend on how the products compare to each other.
Has anyone used both of these products? Does anyone know how they compare in what they offer?
Kind Regards, Kevin
Answer
I thought that this was interesting on the Ebay UK Announcement Board:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>*** Amendment to the Fees Policy***
Date: 18/02/04 Time: 07:04:03 PM GMT
With effect from Wednesday 3rd March, we will be amending the Fees Policy to allow us to refer to a debt collection agency the accounts of those users who are very late in paying their outstanding eBay fees and who still have not paid their eBay fees after our reminders and warnings. The collection agency will also charge those users a proportionate and reasonable fee for the collection of the unpaid eBay fees which will vary according to the amount owed.
This announcement constitutes 14 days advance notice of the amendment to the Fees Policy, as required under Clause 6 of the User Agreement.
For the complete Fees Policy, please visit http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html.
Regards,
The eBay.co.uk Team <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This thread about category changes in the adjacent forum, also concerns the Ebay UK site.
Hmmm, Kevin
Answer
Are these sites doing that well? Will there be much impact from the fee increases?
Answer
Kevin, as usual a thorough, interesting and insightful writing.
Thans.
Laura B
Answer
Commentary asks "Are these sites doing that well?"
At the current time a space bar search on Ebay listings from Australia yields 336,560 items - I would say that the substantial majority are in Australian dollars, and to my surprise the same search on UK Listings now yields too many items to get a result. A search of auct* in description of items listed in the UK gets a result of 687,324 items. Comparitively, this suggests that Ebay now has a total of 1.2 to 1.5 million items listed from UK users.
It is your decision whether this represents that these sites are doing well or not. The popularity of Ebay Australia has risen substantially over the last two years, and talking to someone who uses the Ebay Australia chat boards, many users are unaware that they can even use ebay.com instead of ebay.com.au .
"Will there be much impact from the fee increases?"
Not particularly, I still see reserves of $12 on the Ebay Australia site where the reserve fee is now 3%, so it has not changed listing habits or stopped the use of reserves, it just earns Ebay AG (now located in Switzerland) more money.
At the time that I wrote those first two posts a few days after the rise in fees on the American site, there had been a bit of speculation about how fees would be risen next year. I think that the bracket creep used by Ebay Australia (which, importantly, was not noticed by most Australian users) is likely to be used on Ebay's main site, either next year or the year after.
Commentary, I guess that it can be asked whether there is much impact from any of the fee increases that are instituted by Ebay. My point was only to look at the differences between Ebay's main site fee increases this year (I also did a seperate thread at the time looking at the USA fee increases), and those fee increases on the other sites. All fee increases have a different impact on different users, it is up to the individual whether they have "much" impact, but in my opinion, it does not hurt to try to identify how fees may be increased differently in the future, or how different sites are raising revenue differently.
Cheers, Kevin
Answer
I always believe fee increases have minimal short-term impact. Sell thru rate is a much bigger factor. However, when sell thru falls, then the listing fee becomes the issue.
As fee increases, more and more marginal items will drop off. Of course, some sellers will always find a way to skirt the fees and you will see more 99 cents listing and S/H of $10. There will be no impact on them.