Question
I mostly have lurked on this forum but thought some of you guys might take interest in this.
I just seen a seller charging approximately a $4 handling fee over postage costs and getting his auctions pulled left and right by Ebay.
Once again EBay has shown its knee-jerk reactions. They go from one extreme to the other. I wonder how many more legit sellers this will hurt?
The thread is on Ebay's forums here:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.js...1581 87120184
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I’m selling this stuff at 1 cent Buy it Now.
It's not about excessive shipping, it's about fee avoidance. No sympathy here.
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1¢ buy it nows got nuked????
GOOD!
eBay needs to nuke every single one of them on the site and in every store.
Fee avoidance and search manipulation is all it is.
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The 1 cent BIN is not the issue on this really. What is at issue now is that EBay is pulling auctions with handling fees that are trivial.
A $4 handling is nothing. Ebay is stepping into some new territory here that really should start raising some eyebrows.
BTW this seller also had his $0.99 BIN and $1.99 BIN pulled. Approximately the same handling fees as well.
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The 1 cent BIN is not the issue on this really.
Well... who decides what the issue is? I suspect the initial fee-avoidance could have gotten the other items pulled that MIGHT have been properly priced. Maybe those listings were unfairly pulled, but this seller was playing with fire in the first place with $0.01 listings... although they probably didn't think so.
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A $4 'handling fee' is far from trivial. Such fees should not exceed $1 or $2 for typical items, though a higher amount is certainly understandable for certain items where packaging costs are considerably higher. Like framed paintings.
Any attempt to place shipping in the profit/pricing category is simply fraud.
And that is something that ebay has finally realized has driven away buyers by the millions.
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The 1 cent BIN is not the issue on this really.
1¢ BINs most certainly ARE the issue, because that is where the ugliest part of the fee avoidance~excessive shipping iceberg is at.
This kind of bull is a big part of what has given eBay a reputation for scams & dishonesty and the fact that the PTB are finally cracking down on it is welcomed by most of the seller community. They had to start cleaning it up somewhere and the only problem seems to be is that the most blatant violators are unhappy they are getting busted.
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1¢ BINs most certainly ARE the issue, because that is where the ugliest part of the fee avoidance~excessive shipping iceberg is at.
That is a pretty narrow view of this new Ebay policy.
The point I was trying to make is that EBay is now dictating that handling fees as low as $4 are excessive, irrespective of the sale price.
I totally disagree that $4 handling fees are excessive and considered fraud. Actually I think such thinking is downright luny.
Interestingly EBay is doing nothing in the DVD categories. Where many sellers are still at 1 cent BIN with upwards of $10 S&H for USPS media mail.
I understand the old days were a problem with handling fees of $20 or more on small light weigth items. But this will just further hurt EBay's image while likely giving them a much needed boost in revenue.
Words are like "search manipulation" and "fee advoidance" are nothing but buzzwords to demonize sellers when the real culrpit has been EBay all along. Their fee structure has promoted all of this.
I suspect EBay's new heavy handed S&H approach is nothing more than another way for them to boost revenue. The buyers that have complained about the really blatant S&H gouging will now be forced to pony up more money for items as the regular sellers have to raise prices.
What am I talking about?
Quite frankly anyone with any business sense can see that it looks like EBay is going to start forcing sellers to basically ship at or below postal costs like at Amazon.com if they do not want to risk their items being pulled. This in turn will force many sellers to place much of their current handling costs in the sale price of the item where they will have to charge buyers MORE to cover the EBay listing and FVFs.
Ebay will be the real monetary winner here at the buyers' expense.
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...EBay is going to start forcing sellers to basically ship at or below postal costs...
That's a pretty strong statement.
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This in turn will force many sellers to place much of their current handling costs in the sale price of the item where they will have to charge buyers MORE to cover the EBay listing and FVFs.
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And how, pray tell, is this a *bad thing*???????
Shipping, ideally should be just that - the actual cost to ship the item.
What really plunged the ebay market into the cesspit was when the posties f*cked us with their absurd rate increases a few years ago, and everyone went nuts and decided to make things even worse with inflated shipping costs, effectively killing the low end market for most collectibles.
In any *real* business, the costs of doing business are factored into the PRICE, not some backend scheme to defraud the customers. Its kind of like a store charging 15% tax when the actual sales tax is 8%, 'to cover their costs'.
If sellers are forced to raise prices to a level that will be competitive, cover costs, and not delude or defraud customers, then this is certainly an ideal situation.